Call of Duty Warzone has Perfected Videogame Marketing
Call of Duty (CoD) Warzone is a battle royal video game released on March 10th, 2020. The game has been a massive hit with over 60 million downloads in its first two months. Warzone is an entertaining, well-developed game, but it is also much more. Activison, the publisher of Warzone, has employed several innovative marketing strategies to galvanize the game’s rapid success in the crowded battle royale videogame market consisting of established games such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
In examining six features of Activison’s marketing success with Warzone, marketers and software developers can learn essential and innovative practices that may enhance customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. This examination includes a thorough analysis of how Warzone’s marketing mix — product, price, promotion, and place — has facilitated its ongoing success.
1. Free-to-Play Model/Customer Acquisition
In the past decade, many games have emerged under a free-to-play (F2P) model. Like Fortnite and Apex Legends, Warzone exists within a F2P model. As a free product, a F2P game has a low buy-in and start-up costs for consumers; anyone with the supported console can download and play the game. Activision could have easily priced Warzone similarly to other CoD games, but such a…
